Eternity in an Hour
by Lyra Matsuoka
Summary: Ardelia Mapp and Clarice Starling were best friends once. Fate tore them apart and choices kept them seperated. But closure is never that simple...


AN: Welcome to the ficlet that I had a hankering to write. We don't know why...but now that it's all written and stuff, I thought I'd go ahead and post it and see what came of my endeavor. So here goes. Special thanks, as always, to wintercreek my incomparable beta-reader and the best friend a girl could ask for.   
  
Disclaimer: Don't own Hannibal. Don't own the pretty poem below. They belong to other people who aren't me.   
  
To see a world in a grain of sand  
And a heaven in a wild flower,  
Hold infinity in the palm of your hand  
And eternity in an hour.  
  
- William Blake  
  
Eternity In An Hour  
By Lyra Matsuoka  
Rated PG  
  
When Clarice Starling went missing, no one much noticed. It was both blessing and curse that no one batted an eyelash. Blessing for what transpired afterward, curse for those very few who knew and loved Clarice for the person she had been. Agent Mapp found it very hard to cope with the never-ending torrent of paperwork that came from on high regarding Starling's disappearance. The investigation into the deaths of Mason Verger and his assistant, Cordell, were matters of intense scrutiny, and after a while it was publicly decided that Hannibal Lecter had returned to Muskrat Farm to finish what he had begun.   
  
It was 'commonly known' that Doctor Lecter hated loose ends.   
  
And in the deepest part of her heart, the part that weighed heavy on an unconscious mind, Ardelia knew that Starling had been just that - a loose end. If Lecter had been settling old scores, then it was not impossible, or indeed unlikely, that he had decided to take advantage of Starling's vulnerable position and finish what he had begun eleven years before.   
  
Ardelia had prayed to every god, wished on every star, that Starling would be found. First she prayed that Clarice was alive. Then she considered Lecter's past and prayed that Clarice was dead. It was hard to know, sometimes, what she wished for most. But the days faded into months, and the months into years, and finally she had given up hope.   
  
Until the ring arrived.   
  
It was so small, such a trivial thing. But it brought crushing sadness with it, because it proved what some had snidely whispered in the early days. It proved that Starling was somewhere in the world, living a new life under a new name. And most likely, she was living with Hannibal Lecter.   
  
*~*~*~*~*~*~*  
  
The years rolled past Ardelia Mapp.   
  
Two years after Starling disappeared, Mapp held a memorial service for her. The turnout was heartening, but then, enough time had passed that few people remembered her disgrace at the hands of the FBI.   
The sad truth was that life had moved on, and it had moved on without Starling. The Bureau had healed itself, Krendler was dead and Starling MIA, and no one could quite summon the energy to care deeply anymore.   
Life moved on. There was no inscription on the headstone, as Mapp could not believe Starling was dead and refused to choose one. It had no date of birth and no date of death. It simply read 'Clarice Starling. Beloved Daughter, Friend and Dedicated Agent.' Mapp walked away from that service feeling empty. It felt wrong to declare her friend dead when the emerald on her finger belied the thought. And yet Mapp allowed the service to continue, and left the graveyard as the setting sun turned the white marble headstone a shimmering red.   
  
A year after that, Mapp met a wonderful man, was engaged and married.   
  
Ten years after her marriage the wonderful man wasn't so wonderful anymore, and so Mapp and her husband put an end to their relationship and he moved to Manhattan. Somewhere in that ten years they had managed to produce a spitfire of a girl and a ball of moving energy that sometimes bore a slight resemblance to a little boy. Her daughter was a dancer and track star, her son a budding thespian.   
  
Two months after her divorce, Ardelia took a desk job at the Bureau...no job was worth leaving her babies alone.   
  
A year after obtaining a desk job, Ardelia secured a teaching position at Quantico, and her daily commute was a time of quite reflection.   
  
And through it all, the emerald ring glittered on her right hand.   
  
Another three years passed. Her daughter was a senior in high school, and her son a sophomore. Ardelia felt as young as ever, but the gray in her hair told her that her body and mind might not agree on her age for the moment. There were few things in life that compared to watching her babies grow up, and she wouldn't have missed it for the world.   
  
But sometimes at night, when the house was quiet and she was alone in her room, Mapp would take the ring off her finger and look at it, watching it glint in lamplight, and her eyes would find the inscription inside and she would wish on just one more star that Clarice was alive and happy.   
  
She never got an answer. She hadn't had a response for years. But it didn't stop the wishing. And on one of these nights Mapp was sitting in her bed, a discarded book beside her and her glasses in one hand, contemplating the clear, winter sky and wondering how many stars she had left to wish on.  
  
The phone rang.   
  
The first peal set her heart racing. Phone calls late at night were never a portent of good and happy things. Her children were in bed, safe. Philip was on a business trip in Arizona...had the plane gone down? Heart in her throat, Mapp lifted the receiver.   
  
"Hello?"  
  
"Ardelia."  
  
Mapp stopped dead. She stopped breathing, her heart stopped beating.   
  
"Clarice?"  
  
"The one and only."  
  
Mapp shuddered. The voice hadn't changed. Whatever the woman on the other end of the line might look like, feel like or act like, the voice was still the same. Calm, even, a little husky and ever so slightly sad.   
  
"Been a long time."  
  
"Sure has," Mapp replied, voice steady. She held out a hand - it wasn't shaking. Years of professional training had been required to make that possible.   
  
"I just had a minute. Thought I'd check in."  
  
"Twenty damn years too late."  
  
"Don't exaggerate. It hasn't been twenty. When you say that it makes me feel old."  
  
"It makes me feel old to say it."  
  
"I never thought I'd find gray in my hair. I have it dyed now to hide the silver at my temples."  
  
"And to keep your identity from being discovered."  
  
"There's that."  
  
"Does Lecter have his hair dyed?"  
  
"Why do you ask?"  
  
"Call me curious."  
  
"Use your brain. You're a smart girl."  
  
"No one calls me girl anymore."  
  
"I apologize, Special Agent Mapp."  
  
"Don't bother. We both know you don't mean it."  
  
There was a pause. It stretched long and hard into the night, and there seemed to be no end to it. It wasn't comfortable, it wasn't wrong. It simply was.   
  
"I thought I'd have a lot to say," Mapp choked out.   
  
"Funny. So did I," Clarice laughed a little, but the sound was brittle.   
  
"We don't have much to talk about anymore, do we?"  
  
"Maybe that's why I called. I...remember."  
  
"Me, too."  
  
Another pause. This time the silence was reflective.  
  
"I thought I was angry. Right up until you called, I was sure that I was angry at you for just walking away."  
  
"Point of fact. I was carried."  
  
"Really?"  
  
"Yeah."  
  
Another short pause.   
  
"It's good to talk to you. To talk like this."  
  
"Talk like this?"  
  
"Slang. Basic, kickback, horrible grammar. It's a freedom I'd forgotten."  
  
"I'm glad to hear that you haven't forgotten your roots."  
  
"Never."  
  
"Why did you call, Starling?" It was a question she hadn't meant to ask. But there it was, hanging between them like a living entity.   
  
"You know, I'm not sure. To see if you were all right, if you were alive, if you were happy, maybe all those things."   
  
"Really."  
  
"You said you weren't mad. What did you mean by that?"  
  
"Taking a leaf from the psychopath's book, Clarice?"  
  
"I'm just curious. What did you mean?"  
  
"I meant that I'm not angry. I'm not angry that you left or sad that you stayed away. I don't feel anything right now. Or maybe I don't know what to feel."   
  
"Were you angry?"  
  
"More than I can say."  
  
"I read you got married. Read you had kids."  
  
"Two. Boy and a girl."  
  
"I have three. Two boys and a girl. Triplets."  
  
"Kids. Who'd a thought, huh? Mapp and Starling, mothers."  
  
"It's one of those crazy things."  
  
They laughed together, sharing the joy of motherhood across a distance that Mapp could only guess at.  
  
"You aren't in the States, are you?"  
  
"No."  
  
"I thought not."   
  
"You always did have astonishing powers of deduction."  
  
"One tries one's best."  
  
"Whatever makes you happy, Special Agent Mapp."  
  
Again a pause, shorter and less tense than those that had come before.   
  
"Are you happy, Clarice?"   
  
"Me? I suppose so. You?"  
  
"What does 'happy' mean anyway?"  
  
"Hell if I know."  
  
Mapp drew a breath and let it out slowly. Clarice stayed quiet.   
  
"I've wanted to talk to you for so long, Clarice. To tell you everything you missed; my wedding, my children, changing jobs, loosing my husband, walking through each day without you there to share it. I've missed you, Clarice. So much time without you...it's like you died."  
  
"I did, Ardelia. I did die. That's the point. I'm not the Clarice you knew, and you aren't the Ardelia that I see in my mind. What I have there is a perfect memory. And you aren't perfect. God knows, neither am I. I just wanted to remind myself that you are what I want to be, sometimes."  
  
A single tear trickled down Mapp's cheek, and she didn't bother to brush it away. Mapp rarely cried...there simply wasn't a point to it. But now there was. There was a reason and it was a good reason. She was glad to have it.   
  
"It's good to talk to you, Clarice."  
  
"Ditto."  
  
Another pause, and Mapp felt a swelling in her heart.   
  
"I'm afraid to hang up. If I do, I'll lose you again."  
  
"Same here. I was hoping you'd do the honors."  
  
"And let you off the hook? No chance."  
  
"Did I lose you, Clarice? I promised that I'd always watch your back, and then one day you were gone."  
  
"I've always kind of thought that I lost you."  
  
"So we lost each other."  
  
"I guess we did."  
  
"I think I can live with that."  
  
"It's a goal to work towards."  
  
"Will you call again?"  
  
"I might."  
  
"Don't wait twenty years."  
  
"Eighteen."  
  
"Whatever."   
  
"It's been good to talk to you, Ardelia."  
  
"Same here, Clarice. Take care of yourself."  
  
"Take care of your kids."  
  
"That I can promise."  
  
"On the count of three?"  
  
"One," Ardelia said, tears in her eyes.  
  
"Two," Clarice said on the other end of the line.  
  
"Three," they both breathed and hung up.   
  
Mapp stared at the phone for a minute before looking at the bedside clock. Midnight. She had talked to Starling for an hour only.  
  
*************************************  
  
Three weeks later, Ardelia received an envelope in the mail. In an untraceable wrapper was five hundred dollars cash. A note was wrapped around the bills. Mapp read it and tears stung her eyes.   
  
"To see a world in a grain of sand and a heaven in a wild flower,  
Hold infinity in the palm of your hand and eternity in an hour."  
  
Clarice Starling  
Died 1999  
  
*************************************** 


End file.
